(Communicated by Kok Lay Teo)

Abstract. The single window concept refers to systems that allow organiza- tions to provide one-stop services to users. This paper describes a model for the design of a single window system in the context of e-government. The model determines which government service procedures should be incorporated into the system, which technology should be used to execute each procedure and the time in the planning horizon at which technology upgrades and incorpo- ration processes should take place, while maximizing the total social benefit associated with these decisions. The proposed model, a mixed integer lin- ear program, is applied to the particular problem faced by the government of Chile a few years ago. The solution generated by the model for this instance is compared to that obtained through the Chilean government’s own method for prioritizing the inclusion of procedures into its single window system. When the proposed model was limited to choosing 60 procedures, the number chosen by the Chilean government’s method, the solution produced 1.6 times more benefits. With the limit on the number of procedures removed but consider- ing a budget constraint, the model chose 111 procedures that generated 1.85 times more social benefits than those procedures chosen using the government’s method.

1. Introduction. In recent years, there has been an enormous increase around

the world in the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) in dailyactivities such as paying taxes and purchasing services or products online [26].Governments are no exception to this trend, having integrated ICTs throughouttheir operations in an attempt to improve the provision of government services andinformation to the citizenry, boost the efficiency and effectiveness of the public ad-ministration, enhance transparency and encourage the general public’s participationin processes such as citizens’ forums [10].

Some years ago the United Nations turned its attention to the benefits of ICTs ingovernment administration, creating an E-Government Development Index (EGDI)that measures each country’s progress in implementing e-government programs [57].According to the index for 2016, Europe (0.72) and the Americas (0.52) are the mostadvanced regions while Africa (0.29) is the lowest ranked. Countries such as UnitedKingdom (0.92), Australia (0.91), Republic of Korea (0.89), Singapore (0.88) andFinland (0.88) have made the greatest strides in e-government development [51]. Perhaps surprisingly, Chile is classed among the nations with a high level ofe-government development. A score of 0.69 places the country fifth in the Ameri-cas after the United States of America (0.84), Canada (0.83), Uruguay (0.72) andArgentina (0.70) [51]. This rather impressive performance reflects the major e-government initiatives Chile has implemented in recent years, including the govern-ment’s intranet, the tax collection system, the national information service websiteand the new civil registry system [10, 51]. But the real landmarks in the coun-try’s e-government development are a presidential directive issued in 2001 and thee-government agenda drawn up for the period 2002 to 2005. Both documents werepart of a key initiative known as the Government Reform and Modernization Project(PRYME by its Spanish initials) [45]. In the 2001 presidential initiative, signed on May 11th of that year by the then-President Ricardo Lagos, three central points are of particular interest: an officialdefinition of e-government, the establishment of three areas of action (services tothe public, internal management and deepening democracy), and the establishmentof the above-mentioned e-government agenda for introducing new initiatives to con-solidate the e-government development in Chile [10, 42]. Out of these central points emerged the decision to make the design and imple-mentation of a single window system, that is, a one-stop portal for the delivery ofgovernment services to the public, one of PRYME’s priorities. The main purposeof the system was to enable government entities to ensure responsiveness and ef-ficiency of the routine procedures users must employ to obtain services or complywith obligations such as filing a tax return or applying for a visa (e.g., submittingforms, requesting documents or information, etc.) [10]. The task of designing thesystem involved deciding which of these procedures should be included, identifyingthe requirements for incorporating each procedure and determining the right mo-ment to incorporate them, while simultaneously making efficient use of availableresources at the level of individual entities and the government as a whole. Thus, the first step taken by the government of Chile in the design of the singlewindow system was to charge the Secretary General of the Presidency (SEGPRES),the executive office of the Chilean president, with the task of finding a method forprioritizing the many existing procedures for government services and obligationsthat could be included in the system. More specifically, the prioritization method(known by its Spanish initials MPT) was aimed at establishing the order of impor-tance of each procedure. The ordering criteria were the forecasted demand for thefollowing six years and the delivery time, cost and use of resources for execution. The inclusion of the use of resources criterion points up the significance of the de-sign issue in that it necessarily involves the proper use of public resources for betterprovision of services to citizens. This paper presents an alternative to the approachused by the Chilean government for designing a single window system that is basedon mathematical programming. This alternative takes into account precedence re-lations between procedures, the links between procedures and government entities, DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 3

budget constraints and implementation times, and offers way of finding a solutionthat maximizes social welfare. To test its performance, the proposed approach isapplied to a real-world instance based on data provided by SEGPRES. The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the singlewindow concept. Section 3 surveys the relevant literature. Section 4 sets out theproblem to be solved. Section 5 formulates a model for solving the problem. Section6 presents a case study based on the application of the proposed model to theparticular problem faced by the government of Chile. Section 7 summarizes somemanagerial insights obtained from the results for the case study. Finally, Section 8presents our conclusions and comments, plus a possible extension of the model.

2. The single window concept. One of the earliest definitions of e-government

found in the literature is due to Milward and Snyder [41], for whom it refers totechnologies used to link the citizen to government services, thus eliminating orreducing the citizen’s need to interact with government employees as a means togain access to services. More recently, Luling [39] described an e-government serviceas any interaction a citizen might have with a government body or entity throughan electronic tool or medium. Expressed in these terms, the single window con-cept refers to the capability of executing a procedure in one stop without havingto personally visit multiple government agencies in order to obtain the necessaryinformation and/or documents. To achieve a progressive evolution towards fully functional e-government, Layneand Lee [36] proposed a four-stage growth model. The third and fourth stages inthis model include the creation of single window systems or portals for ensuringaccess to public procedures as an alternative way of providing government servicesin a quick and simple manner. An online system is beneficial both for governments,due to cost reductions and greater efficiencies in service provision, and citizens,who can use it to access procedures more quickly and thus avoid the waiting timesassociated with traditional service provision methods [29]. The general strategy for designing single window systems is founded upon aseries of political, normative, technological, organizational and communicationaldefinitions that are essential to the development of such systems and thus becomein effect as a set of design rules. Building these systems can therefore be seen as anopportunity to redesign the way public procedures are executed including the waythese procedures are interrelated [22, 23]. The implementation of systems such as single window systems that provide ser-vices electronically brings a range of benefits including: shorter lineups at tradi-tional service delivery locations, reduction or elimination of opening hour limita-tions, faster and more specialized attention, exchange of information among gov-ernment entities, simplification and integration of procedures for delivering servicesand other administrative tasks, common criteria for administrative records updat-ing tasks, a more active role in the relationship between government entities andcitizens, simplification of the relationship between the citizen and administrativeorganizations, and better use of available resources [22]. However, despite the many benefits the implementation of a single window sys-tem brings with it, most studies found in the literature focus on the management ofthe infrastructure and communications that are critical to ensure the availability,effectiveness and efficiency of these systems [15], on how to measure the quality ofthe services delivered through such systems [47, 48], or on how the quality of the4 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

services provided through the Internet influence the trust citizens have in public ad-ministration [7]. Thus, a multidimensional look, which considers both technologicaland policy aspects, is essential for the proper design of such systems [21, 38].

3. Literature survey. The concept of e-government has been studied in the lit-erature from various perspectives. From the standpoint of ICTs use, e-governmenthas been described in works by Cohen and Eimicke [12], Harris [25] and Jorgensen[32]. In terms of the impact of an effective implementation of ICTs, it has beenanalyzed by Yildiz [60] and Valdés [52]. The latter in a Chilean context. More specifically, and closer to the theme of the present study, the electronicprovision of government services has been widely analyzed from various angles. Forexample, from the point of view of its impact, citizens involvement and perceptionand use of it [4, 34, 46, 53]; its computer architecture and infrastructure [33, 54];web design [59]; the technical challenges it poses [3, 52]; use of resources [29, 55, 56];and even the legal aspects of it [58]. The concept of a government information network has also been studied [30, 31]and multiple definitions of the notion of a public procedure in the context of theelectronic provision of government services have been proposed [43, 56]. However, anextensive review of the literature has not turned up any articles analyzing the issue ofthe design and provision of electronic services from a strategic planning perspective.In strategic terms, the design of a single window system involves determining whichprocedures should be included in it, which technology should be used to executeeach procedure, and the time in the planning horizon at which each technologyupgrade and procedure incorporation should take place. This conception of the design problem can be compared to that arising withnetworks. This class of problems has been widely studied in many contexts includ-ing manufacturing and logistics systems [11, 19, 28, 37, 49], air freight [27], shiptransport [1, 2], land transport [50], evacuation planning [16], the transport anddistribution of water, gas and petroleum [5, 9, 14, 20], among other applications.More specifically, the design of communication networks with technology upgradinghas been approached as a shortest path problem [18]. Despite a thorough search,the authors were unable to find any studies applying network structures or mathe-matical programming to the problem of public procedure networks or the design ofsingle window systems. In what follows, we formulate and solve the single window design problem for ane-government system using a novel approach based on mathematical programming.

4. Description of the problem. Consider the problem of a central planner in

charge of implementing a single window system for accessing and executing gov-ernment procedures. The task the planner faces is to select N procedures from auniverse of I procedures where N < I. Each procedure is administered by a singlegovernment entity that may be responsible for one or more procedures. The plan-ning horizon is T periods, which can represent years or some other time interval.Decisions are assumed to be taken at the start of each period. Every procedure, whether or not it has been incorporated into the single windowsystem, is executed by one of K available technologies. Included in the set K areconventional technologies (e.g., filling out application forms at government offices ormaking requests by telephone) and modern electronic methods involving the Inter-net or other online networks. Only the latter are single window system-compatible, DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 5

that is, capable of being incorporated into such a system, and are included in asubset P of K. The actual incorporation of a procedure into the single window system, definedfor present purposes as the moment when the procedure becomes fully operationaland thus accessible to the general public, is the culmination of three processes:(1) administrative, political and/or legal approval of the single window system-compatible technology to be used for executing the procedure (if such approval hasnot already been granted); (2) upgrading the procedure to that technology; and (3)implementing the procedure with the new technology in the system itself. Onceincorporated, a procedure is said to “belong” to the system. For technologies not (yet) approved, it is assumed that the planner knows whichones would receive approval and how many whole periods the approval processwould take. The cost of the process is chargeable to the entity responsible for theprocedure. The upgrading of a procedure from its current execution technologyto a new one also takes a known whole number of periods. During this process,the procedure continues to be executed by the current technology but the new onereplaces it as soon as the upgrade and implementation processes are complete. To illustrate the foregoing, consider the case of four possible technologies num-bered 1 through 4 and a procedure currently executed by Technology 1 but whichcould be executed by any of the other three technologies. Assume that the planninghorizon consists of five periods and that the technology upgrade times are known.More specifically, upgrading from Technology 1 to Technology 2 or 3 takes one pe-riod while upgrading from Technology 1, 2 or 3 to Technology 4 takes two periods.Any other upgrade (e.g., from Technology 2 to Technology 3) is not permitted. Theevolution of this procedure through the different technology upgrades is depictedas a network graph in Figure 1. Gray nodes indicate which technology executesthe procedure in each period. As can be seen, Technology 1 is used in Period 1,Technology 3 is used in Periods 2, 3, and 4, and Technology 4 is used in Period 5.Dark gray nodes correspond to periods in which a technology change starts. Blackarrows indicate that the procedure is executed with the same technology in twoconsecutive periods and dashed arrows that a technology change is being made. Inthe example, the change from Technology 1 to Technology 3 begins at Period 1 andis complete in Period 2, whereas the change from Technology 3 to Technology 4starts in Period 3 and takes two periods to be completed in Period 5. As regards costs, there are three types corresponding to the three above-namedprocesses necessary for incorporating a procedure into a single window system: theapproval process cost, the technology upgrade cost and the implementation cost. The incorporation of a procedure into the system is subject to two conditions:(1) the procedure must be executed by a technology that can be incorporated intothe system, that is, a technology in subset P of K; and (2) all the other proceduresthat are a prerequisite to the procedure in question must belong to the system as ofits incorporation (i.e., they must be previously or simultaneously incorporated intothe system). To illustrate the second condition, Figure 2 shows the execution relations amongseven procedures administered by four different government entities. In order to in-corporate Procedure 1 into a single window system, procedures 2, 3 and 6 must alsobe incorporated as they are prerequisites to Procedure 1. Similarly, for Procedure 2to be incorporated, its prerequisites, procedures 4 and 5, must also be incorporated.6 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

Figure 1. Evolution of a procedure’s execution technology over time.

Finally, for Procedure 3 to be incorporated, its prerequisite Procedure 7 must be

incorporated as well.

Figure 2. Example of execution relations among procedures.

In each period, the government assigns the various government entities a budgetexclusively for carrying out e-government initiatives. In addition, the governmentmay allocate extra funding to entities via special items in the government budget.In neither case may funds remaining at period’s end be carried over to the nextperiod. The social welfare generated by a single window system design arises in two ways:(1) through the addition of a procedure to the system, and (2) via the upgrade ofa procedure’s execution technology. The social welfare benefits so generated areassociated with each individual procedure and are ultimately the result of: (i) a DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 7

reduction in the procedure’s execution time, benefitting citizens through time savedand the public entity through more efficient use of resources; and (ii) an increase inthe number of procedures that can be executed in each period.

5. Mathematical formulation of the problem. The proposed solution ap-

proach to the single window system design problem consists in building and solvinga mathematical programming model that determines which procedures are to beincorporated into the system, which technology will be used to execute each oneof them in each period, and the timing of their implementation, while maximizingsocial welfare. The model also supports decision-making on the assignment of extrafunding to the different government entities.

5.1. Sets, indexes and parameters. The various elements of the mathematicalprogramming model and their notation are set out below.Sets: I : set of choosable procedures. T : set of periods in the planning horizon. K : set of available technologies for executing procedures. S : set of government entities responsible for the execution of the proce- dures. Fs : set of procedures executed by entity s, where s ∈ S and Fs ⊆ I. P : set of technologies that permit the integration of a procedure into the single window system, where P ⊆ K.

Parameters: ETik : equal to 1 if procedure i is executed with technology k in the initial period (t = 1), otherwise 0. RTij : equal to 1 if procedure j is a direct prerequisite for the execution of procedure i, otherwise 0. RLik : equal to 1 if procedure i can be executed by technology k, otherwise 0. RSkh : equal to 1 if it is possible an upgrade from technology k to technology h (independent of the procedure), otherwise 0. BSst : budget allocated to public entity s in period t for carrying out e- government initiatives. BGt : total additional funding for e-government initiatives in period t. T Lik : estimated duration (in number of periods) of the approval process for executing procedure i with technology k. T Tikh : estimated duration (in number of periods) of the upgrade of procedure i from technology k to technology h. T Vi : estimated duration (in number of periods) of the implementation of procedure i in the single window system. CVit : cost of the implementation of procedure i in the single window system in period t.8 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

t CTikh : cost of the upgrade of procedure i from technology k to technology h in period t. CLtik : cost of the approval process for executing procedure i with technology k, when the process starts in period t. DDAtik : estimate of the number of times procedure i will be requested by the public in period t if executed by technology k. t BTik : estimate of the social benefit obtained in period t if procedure i is executed by technology k. BVit : estimate of the social benefit associated with procedure i being exe- cutable as part of the single window system in period t. γt : estimate of the proportion of DDAtik that will be requested by the public through the single window system in period t. r : social discount rate by period.

5.2. Variables. The decision variables used to build the model are:

vuti : equal to 1 if the implementation of procedure i in the single window

system starts in period t, otherwise 0. vati : equal to 1 if procedure i belongs to the single window system in period t, otherwise 0. attikh : equal to 1 if the process of upgrading procedure i from technology k to technology h starts in period t, otherwise 0. tctikh : equal to 1 if the process of upgrading procedure i from technology k to technology h ends in period t, otherwise 0. tatik : equal to 1 if procedure i is executed by technology k in period t, oth- erwise 0. t alik : equal to 1 if the approval process for executing procedure i with tech- nology k starts in period t, otherwise 0. bets : the amount of extra funding for e-government initiatives the central planner must allocate to government entity s at start of period t.

5.3. Constraints. The design of the single window system must stay within theoverall government budget allocation as well as within the budget of each govern-ment entity. The total budget for each entity is made up of its own budget and theextra funding allocated to it by the central planner. This total is used to defraythe costs of the three processes involved in the incorporation of procedures intothe system, namely, the processes of: (i) approving new technologies for executingprocedures, (ii) upgrading procedures’ execution technologies, and (iii) implement-ing procedures into the system. Constraints (1) and (2) impose the two budgetconstraints:X X X XX X CLtik alik t + t CTikh attikh + CVit vuti ≤ BSst + bets ∀ s ∈ S, t ∈ T .i∈Fs k∈K i∈Fs k∈K h∈K i∈Fs (1) X bets t ≤ BG ∀t ∈ T . s∈S (2)

The technology for executing each procedure in the initial period is identified byConstraint (3) below. ta1ik = ETik ∀ i ∈ I, k ∈ K. (3) DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 9

The central planner allows each procedure to be executed by only one technologyin each period. Also, the model ensures that a procedure’s execution technologyin a given period is the same as the one used in the previous period if a plannedtechnology upgrade has not been completed. Furthermore, as soon as a technologicalupgrade is complete, the new technology must go into operation. These variousconditions are imposed by constraints (4), (5) and (6) as follows: X tatik = 1 ∀ i ∈ I, t ∈ {2, . . . , T }. k∈K (4) X X tat−1 ik + tct−1 ihk = tatik + tctikh ∀ i ∈ I, k ∈ K, t ∈ {2, . . . , T }. h∈K: RShk =1 h∈K: RSkh =1 (5) t+T T tcikh ikh = attikh ∀ k, h ∈ K : RSkh = 1, i ∈ I, t ∈ T . (6)

The terms on the left-hand side of Constraint (5) specify the execution technol-ogy for procedure i in period t − 1 while the terms on the right-hand side specifythe technology for the same procedure in the following period. Constraint (6) di-rectly relates the attikh variables with the tctikh variables, ensuring that a technologyupgrade is “activated” once the corresponding implementation time has elapsed. Constraint (7) ensures that only those technologies which have been approvedfor the execution of a given procedure can be upgraded. X X θ−T Lik tatik + tctihk ≤ RLik + alik ∀ i ∈ I, k ∈ K, t ∈ T . (7) h∈K θ∈T : θ≤ t

The left-hand side of Constraint (7) indicates whether technology k is the exe-cution technology for procedure i in period t. For this to be the case, the sum ofthe terms on the right-hand side must be at least 1. The right-hand side will beequal to 1 if the decision has already been made to take the necessary steps to ob-tain approval for executing P procedure i with technology k in the period in question. θ−T LikThe latter will be so if θ≤ t alik has taken a value of 1 at least T Lik periodsearlier. It is then certain that the approval process has concluded. The model must also incorporate the relationship between the time at which theimplementation of a procedure in the system starts, represented by variable vuti ,and the time at which the implementation is complete and the procedure “belongs”to the system, represented by variable vati . It must also ensure that a procedurebelongs to the system only if all of its prerequisite procedures also belong to it.These conditions are imposed by constraints (8), (9) and (10) as follows: X vati = vuθ−T i Vi ∀ i ∈ I, t ∈ T : T Vi < t ≤ T. (8) θ∈T : θ≤t X X X vati ≤ tatik + tctihk ∀ i ∈ I, t ∈ T . (9) k∈P k∈P h∈K: RShk =1

vati ≤ vatj ∀ i, j ∈ I : RTij = 1, t ∈ T . (10)

Certain decisions within the design problem may be made only once, either ina given period or over the entire planning horizon. This is the case with decisionsregarding the start of a technology upgrade (attikh ), an upgrade’s completion (tctikh ) tthe approval of a technology (alik ), and the start of the implementation of a pro-cedure in the single window system (vuti ). The necessary constraints are given by10 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

subject to constraints (1)-(25).

6. Case study and computational results. In this section, we apply the pro-posed mathematical programming approach to the case of the single window systeminitiative launched by the government of Chile. The solution generated by the modelis compared to that obtained through the Chilean government’s own prioritizationmethod for ordering the incorporation of government procedures into the single win-dow system, denoted by MPT. The necessary information on existing procedures,budgets for e-government initiatives, estimates of annual demand for each procedureand the costs and completion times for the three procedure incorporation processeswere supplied by SEGPRES. We begin by reviewing some of this information andthe details of the instance used to apply and evaluate our model. We then presentthe results of the model and compare them to those obtained using MPT.6.1. Evaluation instance. The database provided by SEGPRES for this studycontained 1,364 procedures from which to select those to be incorporated into thesingle window system. The procedures were administered by 120 different publicinstitutions. The planning horizon for the evaluation instance was set at 6 yearsby SEGPRES, which corresponds to the length of a presidential term in Chile bythe year of this study. Table 1 describes the relevant information about proceduresavailable in the database. Table 1. Attributes contained in the SEGPRES database for each procedure.

Attribute Description Name Name of the procedure. Institution Name of the government institution administering the pro- cedure. Description Brief description of the procedure. Demand Estimate of the number of annual requests for the procedure by type of execution technology and incorporation status in the single window system (i.e., whether or not it belongs to the system). Technology level Information on the procedure’s current execution technology. Technology upgrade Information on the time required for a technology upgrade. Prerequisites List of direct prerequisite procedures. Successors List of procedures for which the procedure is a prerequisite (i.e., list of direct successors). Classification Specifies the type of procedure (i.e, leaf, root, intermediate or independent). Related procedures List of all directly related procedures (prerequisites plus suc- cessors). Technology impediments Information on the impediments to the execution of the pro- cedure by a given technology and the estimated time required to overcome the impediments.

Procedures can be classified into four types: leaf, intermediate, root and indepen-dent. Leaf procedures are those that do not have prerequisites but are prerequisitesfor others. Intermediate procedures are those that have prerequisites and are pre-requisites for others. Root procedures have prerequisites but are not prerequisitesfor other procedures. Finally, independent procedures are those that neither havenor are prerequisites for others. From the total number of procedures, 27% were12 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

dures and 52% as independent procedures. On average, a procedure is directly related to 1.75 other procedures. This numberincreases to 2.56 if independent procedures are excluded from the computation. Thelargest number of successors and the largest number of prerequisites, whether director indirect, for a procedure are 101 and 18, respectively. These two figures give usan idea of the complexity of the precedence relationships involved in the design ofthe single window system. In terms of workload for the different government institutions, out of the 120institutions, 27 of them (23%) only administer one procedure and 43 (36%) areeach responsible for 10 or more procedures. As regards execution technologies, we consider seven alternatives: (1) conven-tional (i.e., paper forms and documents, filing cabinets); (2) telephony; (3) tele-phony plus conventional; (4) Internet; (5) Internet plus conventional; (6) telephonyplus Internet; (7) telephony plus Internet plus conventional. According to the infor-mation provided by SEGPRES, 1,081 out of 1,364 procedures (79%) were handledconventionally whereas only 105 procedures (7.6%) were executed by a technol-ogy involving the Internet, making the procedure eligible for incorporation into thesingle window system right from the first period of the planning horizon. The details presented above give us an idea of the size of the evaluation instanceused to test the proposed model. For example, the number of binary variables atikhtand tctikh is 2 × 1, 364 × 7 × 7 × 6 = 802,032. As for the constraints, we consider21 possible technology upgrades. Thus, Constraint (6) alone, the one imposingthe largest number of restrictions, translates into 21 × 1, 364 × 6 = 171,864 ofthem. Constraints (11) and (12) together contribute with 2 × 21 × 1, 364 = 57, 288additional restrictions.6.2. Single window system generated by MPT. The government’s MPTmethod recommended the incorporation of 60 procedures into the single windowsystem over the 6-year planning horizon. The selected procedures are listed in Table2. This solution, however, did not take into account budget constraints. In addition,the method neither provided an estimate of the social benefits associated with theincorporation of the 60 procedures nor suggested a chronological ordering for theincorporation of the procedures. Later in this section we will use the proposed modelto estimate the social benefits associated with the MPT solution. Furthermore, theMPT method did not consider the precedence relationships between procedures.For example, one of the 60 procedures in the solution was T14, for which T836 is aprerequisite. However, the latter was not included in the solution. This means thatdespite being selected, T14 could not be implemented, providing no social benefits. Finally, it is important to note that MPT decisions are based on the estimatedincrease in the number of requests the incorporation of a procedure into the singlewindow system will bring with it. The MPT method follows a “greedy” approachwith respect to these values, where the total number of procedures to be incorpo-rated is pre-specified. It ignores costs, precedence relationships and the time for theincorporation of the different procedures.6.3. Single window system generated by the proposed model. The pro-posed model was used to solve two cases. In the first case, the model was forced toselect 60 procedures without budget constraints, making the solution comparable tothe one generated by MPT. The second case reflected the priorities of the Govern-ment Reform and Modernization Project (PRYME) discussed earlier and imposed a DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 13

The solutions generated by the two approaches provide significantly different

levels of benefits. For purposes of calculating the benefits of the MPT solution,the model was forced to select the same 60 procedures chosen by MPT under the DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 15

assumption that all 60 are implemented in the first period using a technology com-patible with the single window system. We also assumed that a procedure beginsproducing benefits only from the period in which all of its prerequisite procedureshave also been incorporated. The total social benefit produced by the model’s own selection of 60 procedures(i.e., the 60 procedures that maximized the total social benefit) turned out to be1.6 times greater than that associated with the MPT solution. The difference isattributable mainly to the fact, already noted above, that many of the 60 procedureschosen by MPT could not in practice provide any benefits because one or more ofthe prerequisites for their execution were not included in the solution.6.3.2. Case 2: PRYME problem, with budget constraint. For the case reflecting thePRYME criteria, which included a budget constraint but set no limit on the numberof procedures to be incorporated, the model identified 111 procedures. The totalsocial benefit associated with this solution was 1.85 times higher than that obtainedby incorporating the procedures chosen by MPT, and the solution time was near 30minutes. The solution for this case also suggested to carry out technology upgradesfor other 129 procedures. These procedures, although not being incorporated intothe single windows system, also contributed to the achieved social benefit of thesolution. Some details regarding the incorporation of the 111 procedures into the singlewindow system and about the suggested technology upgrades, as determined by themodel, are shown in Table 4. The first row, “Implementation in process”, displaysthe number of procedures whose process of implementation into the system is tobegin each year. The number of procedures whose implementation is completeeach year, and thus are fully incorporated into the system, is shown in the secondrow labeled “Implemented”. Since the implementation process for a procedureis estimated to take 12 months, the number procedures in process each year isequal to the number of procedures implemented and thus executable the followingyear. Finally, the other columns, labeled “Technology X”, show the evolution ofthe number of procedures that are upgraded to each technology year by year overthe course of the planning horizon.

Two sets of procedures from the 111 chosen by the model were selected to illus-trate the evolution of the execution technologies from year to year over the planning16 CATALDO, FERRER, REY AND SAURÉ

horizon. The sets consist of all those falling into the “Legal Status” and “Work”thematic areas under the procedure classification defined by SEGPRES. The 15procedures in the “Legal Status” area are listed in Table 5, grouped according tothe government entity they are administered by.

The technology to be used for executing these procedures in each year is indi-cated by the rows in Table 6, which also gives the year in which each procedure isincorporated into the single window system. For example, procedures T931, T715,T757, T769, T770, T771 and T772 are executed at the start of the horizon byconventional technology (0). This technology is maintained through the first andsecond year, before being upgraded to Internet technology (4) at the start of thethird year. The “Work” area accounted for 4 of the 111 procedures chosen by the model.These procedures are grouped in Table 7 according to the government entity re-sponsible for them. The technology to be used for executing the Work area procedures in each yearis indicated by the rows in Table 8, which also provides the year in which eachprocedure is incorporated into the single window system. An analysis of the 111 procedures chosen by the model for the evaluation instancefound that the eleven procedures T152, T206, T209, T361, T474, T1059, T1060,T1076, T1091, T1251 and T1267 determined the incorporation of the other 100.This is illustrated for procedures T206 and T1059 in figures 3 and 4, respectively. DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 17

Figure 3. Execution Figure 4. Execution

7. Managerial insights. In this section, we summarize some managerial insights

obtained based on our experience analyzing and solving the case study above. First,we would like to emphasize that, at a general level, tools such as the model describedin this paper allow decision-makers to conduct a more thorough analysis and obtaina deeper understanding of the problem at hand. Furthermore, this type of toolsprovides greater transparency to the decision-making process. At a technical level,the weights given to multiple subjective decision factors are reduced to the compu-tation of an objective performance metric such as the total social benefit associatedwith a system design. Second, it is important to note that a greedy approach gen-erates several inefficiencies. The unintended lack of foresight ultimately translatesinto a reduced total social benefit. For example, in the particular case of this study,the results indicate that a high priority should be given in the first periods to im-plementing procedures executed through conventional means as they have a highersocial impact when incorporated into the single window system. Thus, the optimalsolution not only provides a recommendation regarding the procedures to incorpo-rate into the system but also suggests that is necessary to build an upgrade pathfor procedures, even for those that will not be part of the system.

8. Discussion and conclusions. The rapid advances in e-government technolo-

gies have prompted governments to rethink traditional ways of providing govern-ment services. One of the new forms of service provision consists in the imple-mentation of single window systems that provide citizens with one-stop proceduresfor requesting government services or complying with obligations. These systemsdo away with the need to personally visit multiple government entities in order toobtain documents or other information required to make the request or performthe obligation they ultimately desire. Implementation of single window systemsbring significant benefits for both citizens and governments, including shorter line-ups at traditional service delivery points, specialized attention, intercommunication DESIGN OF A SINGLE WINDOW SYSTEM FOR E-GOVERNMENT SERVICES 19

between government bodies, and simplification of procedures for delivering services

and other administrative tasks. But the complexities involved in designing singlewindow systems manually, given the interdependence of the procedures and the ex-istence of various levels of technology for their execution, greatly complicates theprocess of implementing such systems in an efficient and expeditious manner. This paper proposes a novel methodology for determining which government ser-vice procedures should be incorporated into a single window system and at whattime in the planning horizon. Whereas previously this process was carried out onlyby partial selection methods, the proposed methodology adopts a global approachthat takes into account the relationships between different procedures and the avail-able technologies. At the heart of the methodology is a mathematical programmingmodel that specifies the relationships between the various decisions involved in theprocedure selection problem. In particular, the model relates the period in whicha procedure changes state, whether by incorporation into the system or as a con-sequence of an upgrade of the technology for executing it, to the conditions thathave to be satisfied for the change to take place. The approach also provides sup-port for decisions regarding whether or not to approve technologies for executingprocedures and the use and allocation of budget funding. Inputs to the modelinclude information on demand for the procedures, implementation times and theestimated benefits of incorporating procedures into the system at a given momentin the planning horizon and using a given execution technology. The application of the proposed model to the problem of determining whichgovernment service procedures to incorporate into a single window system, andwhen, can generate significant social welfare benefits while ensuring an efficientuse of available resources. This was demonstrated by a case study for testing themodel, which addressed the just-described problem faced by the government of Chilein the design of its single window system. On the first test, in which the number ofprocedures to be incorporated was set at 60 and no budget constraint was imposed,the model generated a solution whose social benefits were 1.6 times higher than thesolution arrived at by the government’s own prioritization method. On the secondtest, with a budget constraint applied but no limit on the number of procedures tobe incorporated, the model delivered a solution incorporating 111 procedures whosesocial benefits were 1.85 times higher than those identified using the governmentapproach. In general terms, tools such as the model we propose enable decision-makers toconduct a more thorough analysis and obtain a deeper understanding of the singlewindow system design problem. In the particular case addressed in this study, themodel also ensured greater transparency given that, at a technical level, the weightof subjective factors in the decision process was reduced due to the application ofobjective performance measures such as the estimation of the social welfare benefitsgenerated by a given system design. Finally, one aspect of the problem the proposed methodology did not considerwas the impact of an increase in the demand for a given procedure on the demandfor procedures that are prerequisite to it. Extending the model to incorporate thisfactor and thereby strengthen its performance would therefore provide an interestingline of inquiry for future research.

Acknowledgments. This research was partially funded by Complex Engineering